


Echoes of Laughter

by i_claudia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Azkaban, Dark, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-05
Updated: 2007-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:32:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius doesn’t know how long it’s been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes of Laughter

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/1555.html). (05 November 2007)

Sirius doesn’t know how long it’s been. How long since he’s seen the sun? Felt the rain on his face? When was the last time he tore across the sky on his motorcycle or a field on his paws, just for the hell of it, just because he felt alive and wanted to shout it to the world? He can’t remember. He doesn’t think he _wants_ to remember. Remembering hurts.

Hell, he doesn’t even remember how it feels to be alive. He exists to eat, sleep, pace the dimensions of the cell over and over. Five steps across, six steps from window to door. That is his world; a world full of listless grey, sometimes descending into black despair and memories, cruel souvenirs from the Dementors. The life outside means nothing within these walls.

_The crater in the street is still smoking, Wormtail—no,_ Pettigrew _the traitor is gone, scurrying away, and there is nothing good left in the world. All around him people are screaming, crying, running, calling for help. He hears none of it through the roaring in his ears. Eventually something breaks through the numbness—someone laughing hysterically, the laughter of a shattered soul. It takes him a moment to realize that it’s his own laughter. He goes with the Ministry officials quietly, still laughing. If the laughter stops, reality will rush in._

_As they cart him away, he looks out at the crowd gathered around to watch a murderer—murderer, he thinks, I am a murderer—hauled away. His glance catches on a brown-haired man who has fallen to his knees. Remus stares at him, eyes hollow, cutting through the numbness to shatter Sirius’s heart all over again. Sirius stops laughing. He reaches out, tries to explain... Remus, I didn’t do it, Remus, I promise you..._

He wakes up, sweating. The Dementor moves on to its next victim, leaving him alone with the nightmare. Only this one is real... or at least, it seems real. Remus’s face lingers in his mind. His betrayed look is burned onto the backs of Sirius’s eyelids, and when Sirius closes his eyes he can still see him kneeling on the broken street. Sometimes it is Remus, and sometimes it blurs and James or Lily is staring up at him, and once it was Harry—a Harry grown, orphaned because of Sirius—but usually it is Remus, because Remus is what hurts the most.

Sirius keeps a tally of the full moons on his wall, carefully scratching a mark deeply into the rock each time. He hasn’t missed one yet. On full moon nights, he changes to his dog form and stays awake, holding vigil for the werewolf, howling somewhere across the water, who has lost everyone. Sirius curls up and watches the moon make her stately journey across the sky and hopes that the wolf knows that even though the world is grey and small there is still a dog who cares for him.

_I promise you, Remus,_ he thinks, not caring that his promise is impossible, ignoring the fact that no one has ever gotten out of Azkaban who was not supposed to, because where there is a will there is a way—Sirius remembers his father telling him this when he was very small, and even though his father was a foul old prejudiced pureblood he was sometimes right— _I promise I will come back to you._ He thinks it fiercely, holding onto it against the shrinking walls and the screams, and for a brief moment the world is a little brighter.


End file.
